May 4 Baseline health

Google is looking for 10,000 people to join its exhaustive Project Baseline initiative which is aiming to improve human health at a total cost of around $100 million. The volunteers will need to submit to x-ray examinations, heart scans, liquid biopsies and genome analysis as well as wear the Verily tracking smartwatch for a period of four years.

“A broad group of participants - including those who are exceptionally healthy, at-risk of disease, and with overt disease - will be providing deep data on a diverse set of measurements with repeat sampling,” according to Jessica Mega, chief medical officer, Verily, the entity previously known as Google Life Sciences.

The study dataset will comprise clinical, molecular, imaging, self-reported, behavioural, environmental, sensor and other health-related measurements, and Verily is creating an infrastructure to process multi-dimensional health data, much of which have never been combined for an individual. “Our vision is that this data platform can serve as a single query source and may be used for more seamless data integration and collaboration,” Mega explains.

And core Project Baseline partnerships are up and running with Duke University School of Medicine and Stanford Medicine, plus there are alliances in the areas of academia, medicine, science, patient-advocacy, engineering and design.

For all that, “the participants are at the centre of this study,” says Mega. “They will serve as active collaborators alongside the rest of the Project Baseline study team and have the option to receive certain health data and test results to share with a doctor.”

There are plans for a participant committee and the Baseliners will also be able to join conference calls with members of the study team and have the opportunity to evaluate new tools and technologies.